2 brothers injured in N.H. plane crash

In another accident yesterday, a small plane bound for Rhode Island crashes in Connecticut, but the pilot escapes with minor injuries.

By Elizabeth Gudrais
Published in The Providence JournalApril 21, 2005

A plane crash in a coastal New Hampshire town seriously injured two Rhode Islanders yesterday.

Earl A. DeCelles, a 60-year-old North Smithfield resident, was listed in critical condition at Massachusetts General Hospital last night. His brother, Edouard N. DeCelles, who is 64 and lives in Burrillville, was listed in fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The single-engine plane piloted by Edouard DeCelles was headed for North Central Airport, in Smithfield, but it went down in North Hampton, N.H., a few minutes before 1 p.m.

Three hours later, in Connecticut, another plane bound for Rhode Island crashed. The only person aboard was the pilot, who was not seriously injured and whom the Connecticut State Police would not identify.

The Piper Cherokee carrying the DeCelles brothers had just taken off from Hampton Airfield, in North Hampton, when it crashed, Federal Aviation Administration Eastern region spokesman Jim Peters said.

In the second crash, at 4:03 p.m., a 1980 Beechcraft Bonanza hit power lines as it prepared to make an emergency landing at Waterbury-Oxford Airport, located in central Connecticut, north of Bridgeport and New Haven.

The pilot, whom Peters would not identify, took off from Cuyahoga County Airport in Cleveland bound for T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. The pilot reported to an air-traffic controller in Nashua, N.H., that he'd lost power while cruising at 9,000 feet over Waterbury.

A controller in Westbury, N.Y., on Long Island, was assisting the pilot in an emergency landing when the plane "hit the power lines, burst into flames, and created what witnesses described as a fireball," Peters said.

The plane was registered to a company called Jest Air LLC, with an address of 4300 Hamann Parkway, Willoughby, Ohio.

In Southbury, Conn., where the plane landed three miles northwest of the airport, 1,300 customers of Connecticut Light & Power lost electric service because of the downed lines, according to Frank Poirot, a spokesman for the electric company. Poirot said that as of 10 p.m., 900 customers were still waiting for restoration of their power, but he expected that to happen by 1 a.m. today.

The Southbury police said the plane didn't hit any structures when it crashed, and no one on the ground was injured.